Peter Matthiessen - Shadow Country

Walter says he would like to “go bag me a Spaniard,” but he cannot abandon his mother when his father is not well, so will stay home and run their cattle business. Dr. Langford is an excellent doctor, he takes good care of Mama, but in recent years-here’s Papa again-his side interest in business makes him pay more mind to profits than to people. “Doc” Langford and Captain Cole are grazing stock on Raulerson Prairie at Cape Sable, where Papa says the horseflies and mosquitoes will show them what damn fools they are if saline coast grass doesn’t starve their cattle first. (If Papa’s two cows at Chatham Bend had no screened shed between sunset and sun-up, he says, they’d be sucked dry of blood let alone milk.)

Sometimes I think that Mama is getting better. When we first came, she had a queer shine to her skin like a coon pelt scraped so thin the sun shines through. With rest, she has some color back and her old curiosity, too, and even dares to question Papa’s views about the War. Being an invalid with time to read, she keeps herself so well informed that even Papa pays attention to her comments. In her quiet way, Mama despises the cattlemen’s “tin patriotism,” all this flag-waving and fine speechifying. Our brave young men, who have no say about it, are sent off to be killed, while our rich businessmen wave the flag and rake in the fat profits from what the Secretary of State has called this “splendid little war.” Mama asks, “How ‘splendid’ is it for scared homesick boys who must do all the screaming and the dying?”

Although the words “brave Yankee boys” still set his teeth on edge, Papa is fiercely patriotic, but hearing the Langfords and Captain Cole gloat over their war profits has made him cynical. (Captain Jim Cole chortles unabashed that war “is the best d-business there is.”) “ Captain Cole!” he growls, disgusted. Says this so-called captain has no give to him and people see that so he takes Walter along to grease his way. Walter admits that Mr. Cole is a “rough diamond,” but like Mama I find no diamond in the man, a hard dull money glint is all I see. Papa suspects these public patriots of selling cattle to the Spanish on the sly.

Dear Papa says he will never salute the Stars and Stripes. The war with Spain is very like “the War of Yankee Aggression,” as he still calls the Civil War: the South, he says, was the first conquest of the Yankee Empire, and Cuba and the Spanish colonies will be next. Yet he also denounces Mr. Twain for writing that Old Glory deserves to be replaced with a pirate flag, with black stripes instead of blue and every star a skull and crossbones. Mama nods, swift needles flying. She quotes an editorial: “The taste of Empire is in the mouth of the people, even as the taste of blood-”

“Mrs. Watson.” Papa snaps his paper. “Kindly permit me to read in peace.”

Mama hums a little to soothe Papa, whose newspaper is lifted high to block her from his sight. I watch her bosom rise and fall in her emotion. “This is the Good Lord’s war on Spain, they say, and we are but His servants. Don’t you agree, dear?”

“Mrs. Watson, be still!”

“With all this money being made, it’s so appropriate that we inscribe Him on our coins- In God We Trust! I believe the Germans share our feeling: Gott mit uns, they say.” Speaking more and more softly, Mama knits faster and faster. “So even when our women have no voice-and our poor darkies are tormented, burned, and hung-we can take comfort in our faith that God is on our side.”

Papa’s paper falls still as he turns his gaze to her in dreadful warning; she raises pale innocent eyebrows and resumes her knitting. “A brave lady”-she pretends to address her daughter, as if only females could make sense of the ways of men-“has recently petitioned President McKinley about the lynching of ten thousand Negroes in the past twenty years alone, almost all of them innocent of any crime.” She is upset that the Supreme Court has upheld segregation on the railroads. “ ‘What can more certainly arouse race hate,’ ” she reads aloud, quoting the dissent of Justice Harlan, “ ‘than state enactments which in fact proceed on the ground that colored citizens are so inferior and degraded that they cannot be allowed to sit in public coaches occupied by white citizens?’ ”

Papa slaps his paper down and leaves the house. Lucius and Eddie beg permission to run after him to Ireland’s Dock, knowing he will buy them sweets at Dancy’s Stand before he sails. The two boys twist like eels upon their chairs, and Eddie pretends he is suffering a call of nature, but Mama doesn’t let them go so easily: in her quiet way, she is determined to advance her “liberated” ideas, about women’s suffrage especially.

Mama says that Indians, too, would suffer “Jim Crow” laws if we hadn’t wiped most of them out with bullets and diseases. In south Florida today, there are few left, but Papa says they have started to come in to trade at Everglade with dugouts full of deer hides, plumes, and pelts. The women like calico in yellow, red, and black-coral snake colors, says Lucius, who knows everything there is to know about Indians and the natural world of the Glades country. Probably the coral snake has sacred meaning, our little boy explains, until Eddie scoffs at his opinions, reminding him that he is only nine. Eddie is happy here in town but Lucius badly misses Chatham Bend.

The Indians are still afraid that the few families left in the Big Cypress and the Glades will be captured and removed to Oklahoma. They call themselves Mikasuki, denying they are Seminole, but nobody listens to them, least of all Captain Cole, who declares he would gladly round up the whole bunch and ship ’em as far as New Orleans in his cattle schooner at no charge to the government-“just to be rid of ’em,” he says, “cause they won’t never be civilized, no more’n wolves nor panthers, and sooner or later they will get in the way of progress.” Papa says this was the first d-d thing he ever heard Cole say that he agreed with. Said the man sounded sincere for once, all but that part about not charging for the shipping.

Captain Cole, looking too serious, has brought Mama a book. In a hushed voice, he asks her to read a brief marked section; he would come back for his book a little later. “Always first with the news,” Mama said warily, turning the book over. “Bad news especially.” She held it on her lap for a long time before she opened it.

The book was called Hell on the Border, and the marked pages told about Belle Starr, the Outlaw Queen, and her life of reckless daring, and how that life had ended on her birthday, February 3 of 1889. Mama closed the book again, got up to leave the room but paused in the doorway when I read aloud from the marked passage. About fourteen months earlier, a neighbor, one Edgar Watson, had removed from Florida. Mrs. Watson was a woman of unlimited education, highly cultured and possessed of a natural refinement. Set down in the wilderness, surrounded by uneducated people, she was attracted to Belle, who was unlike the others, and the two women soon became fast friends. In a moment of confidence, she had entrusted Belle with her husband’s secret: he had fled from Florida to avoid arrest for murder.

After Belle was slain, the book continued, suspicion could point to none other than Watson, who was released for want of evidence but was later imprisoned in Arkansas for horse stealing and killed while attempting to escape from an Arkansas prison.

“Well, there you are!” I cried to Mama. “That last part proves that this darn know-it-all has the wrong Edgar Watson entirely!”

Mama sat down and resumed her knitting. Soon her needles stopped. “No, Carrie, dear.” She put her work down. My heart leapt so that I had to press it back in place with my fingertips. Papa was never indicted in the Belle Starr case, she whispered, and that murder in Florida was committed by Uncle Billy Collins’s brother. One day Papa came home to their Fort White farm and told her to pack everything into the wagon, they were going to Oklahoma. He said a shooting had occurred which was being blamed on him, said they’d be coming for him. He never accused Lemuel Collins, and never said another word about it.